Insurgency vs. Civil War

[ryanmleigh]

Rex-
Did you truly mean to say that civil war is a subset of insurgency, or did you mean that insurgency is a subset of civil war? Your example 1 would lead me to believe that there is scale of intrastate conflict, with civil war residing somewhere at the top and insurgency falling somehwere below that.

The current literature would also support some concept of scale. According to COW (Correlates of War) University of Michigan, political violence must incur at least 1,000 deaths to be considered a civil war. There is also a necessity for a minimum number of casualties incurred by the incumbent forces in order to achieve civil war status.

Much of the discussion so far has been terrific, to some degree I think it highlights some of the confusion surrounding the concepts of civil war and insurgency. I believe that is why it is important to identify the differences between them. It goes further than just categorizing conflict. Understanding the conflict should have an impact on how we address it.